Sir Abbas Hilmi Pasha or Abbas II GCB, GCMG, GCVO (Arabic: عباس حلمي باشا) (July 14, 1874,
Alexandria – 19 December 1944, Geneva) was the last khedive of
Egypt (January 8, 1892 – December
19, 1914).
Abbas Hilmi Pasha was the great-great-grandson of Mehmet Ali. He succeeded his
father, Tawfiq Pasha, as khedive of Egypt. As a boy he visited England, and he had an English tutor for some time in Cairo. He then went to
school in Lausanne, and from there passed on to the Theresianum
in Vienna. In addition to Turkish, his mother tongue, he acquired fluency in Arabic, and a good
conversational knowledge of English, French
and German.
He was still at college in Vienna when the sudden death of his father raised him to the Khedivate; and he was barely of
age according to Turkish law, which fixes majority at eighteen in cases of succession to the
throne. For some time he did not cooperate very cordially with the United Kingdom, whose
army had occupied Egypt in 1882. As he was young and eager to exercise his new power, he resented the interference of the British
Agent and Consul General in Cairo, Sir Evelyn Baring, who was elevated to the peerage as Lord Cromer. At the outset of his reign,
Khedive Abbas surrounded himself with a coterie of European advisers who opposed the British occupation of Egypt and encouraged
the young khedive to challenge Cromer by replacing his ailing prime minister with a nationalist. At Cromer's behest, Lord
Roseberry, the British foreign secretary, sent him a letter stating that the khedive was obliged to consult the British consul on
such issues as cabinet appointments. In January 1894 Khedive Abbas, while on an inspection tour of Egyptian army installations
near the southern border, the Mahdists being at the time still in control of the Sudan, made public remarks disparaging the
Egyptian army units commanded by British officers. The British commander of the Egyptian army, Sir Herbert Kitchener, immediately
offered to resign. Cromer strongly supported Kitchener and pressured the khedive and prime minister to retract the khedive's
criticisms of the British officers. From that time on, Abbas no longer publicly opposed the British, but secretly he created,
supported, and sustained the nationalist movement, which came to be led by Mustafa Kamil. As Kamil's thrust was increasingly
aimed at winning popular support for a National Party, Khedive Abbas publicly distanced himself from the Nationalists.
In time he came to accept British counsels. In 1899
British diplomat Alfred Mitchell-Innes was appointed Under-Secretary of State for
Finance in Egypt, and in 1900 Abbas paid a second visit to England, during which he frankly acknowledged the great good the
British had done in Egypt, and declared himself ready to follow their advice and to cooperate with the British officials
administering Egyptian affairs. The establishment of a sound system of native justice, the great remission of taxation, the
reconquest of the Sudan, the inauguration of the substantial irrigation works at Aswan, and the increase of cheap, sound education, each received his formal approval. He displayed more interest
in agriculture than in statecraft. His farm of cattle and horses at Qubbah, near Cairo, was a model for scientific agriculture in Egypt, and he created a similar establishment
at Muntazah, near Alexandria. He married the Princess
Ikbal Hanem and had several children. Muhammad
Abdul Mun'im, the heir-apparent, was born on February 20, 1899.
His relations with Cromer's successor, Sir Eldon Gorst, were excellent, and they co-operated in appointing the cabinets headed
by Butrus Ghali in 1908 and Muhammad Sa'id in 1910 and in checking the power of the Nationalist Party. The appointment of
Kitchener to succeed Gorst in 1911 displeased Abbas, and relations between him and the British deteriorated. Kitchener often
complained about "that wicked little Khedive" and wanted to depose him.
When the Ottoman Empire joined the Central
Powers in World War I, the United Kingdom declared Egypt a British protectorate on 18 December 1914 and deposed Abbas. Abbas supported the Ottomans in the War, including
leading an attack on the Suez Canal. His uncles Husayn Kamil and then Fuad I, the British choices for their Protectorate, issued a series of restrictive orders to strip Abbas
of property in Egypt and even forbade contributions to him. These also barred Abbas from entering Egyptian territory and stripped
him of the right to sue in Egyptian courts. Abbas finally accepted the new order of things on 12 May 1931. He retired to
Switzerland where he died at Geneva 19 December 1944.
References
Cromer, Sir Evelyn Baring, Earl of. Abbas II. London: Macmillan, 1915.
Goldschmidt, Arthur, Biographical Dictionary of Modern Egypt. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2000, pp. 2-3.
Pollock, John. Kitchener: Architect of Victory, Artisan of Peace. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2001.
al-Sayyid, Afaf Lutfi. Egypt and Cromer: A Study in Anglo-Egyptian Relations. London: John Murray, 1968.
Sonbol, Amira, trans. & ed., The Last Khedive of Egypt: Memoirs of Abbas Hilmi II. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press, 1998.
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
